But as he notched his fifth win of 2014, Magny (13-3 MMA, 6-2 UFC) proved again that he’s not afraid of a little hard work, which went a long way to earning him a TKO victory over Macario (7-2 MMA, 1-2 UFC) due to punches from the mount at 2:40 of Round 3.

The welterweight bout closed out the preliminary card of today’s UFC 179 event at Maracanazinho Gymnasium in Rio de Janeiro. It aired on FOX Sports 1 following additional prelims on UFC Fight Pass and ahead of the main card on pay-per-view.

This was a closely contested bout for most of the first two rounds, with both fighters having difficulty getting much of an offense going. As Magny looked to put his reach to work, Macario waved him in while hoping to tee off with one big bomb.

Where Magny finally found an advantage worth pressing was when he took Macario down late in the second round, then claimed full mount and went to work with some ground-and-pound. Once Macario proved unable to extricate himself from the position, Magny had his blueprint for how he was going to take full control of the fight in round three, which is just what he did.

After again planting Macario on the floor and seizing the mount, Magny kept up a steady barrage of strikes from the top. While none of them were overwhelming blows by any means, they kept Macario in a defensive shell, and when he couldn’t free himself or mount an intelligent defense referee Eduardo Herdy was forced to step in and stop it.

“It was a good fight,” Magny said. “I wanted to come out here and do a better fight than the last one I did here in Rio. I was here last year, and I let (Sergio Moraes) get the best of me. I wanted to come back here, dominate and prove myself as a fighter.”

With the win, Magny has now notched five straight victories in the UFC, all of them coming in 2014. Macario has now lost two of his last three.